Australian PC World articles from May 2000

Australian PC World archives from May 2000

17in MONITORS.(reviews of seven 17-inch monitors)(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... When you use a computer, you spend most of the time staring at its monitor. The screen is the primary interface between you and the system, and its quality can sometimes make all the difference between a pleasant workstation and one that's a...

Consoles get wired, gamers go wild.
May 1, 2000... The Internet is set to welcome a whole new race of gamers as further Net-capable games consoles come to market. Previewed in the April issue of PC World (page 88), Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 2 has starting selling in Japan. ...

news briefs.(News Briefs)
May 1, 2000... IBM, Toshiba make digital music pact IBM and Toshiba are to collaborate on the secure distribution of digital music, with their first products expected on the market by the end of the second quarter. The companies will integrate digital...

IBM wears black in new NetVistas.(network computers)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2000... IBM has announced the NetVista line of devices, a new family of smaller, sleek PCs, Internet access devices, and thin clients. At the time of writing, the NetVista devices are scheduled to appear in April, when pricing will be announced....

SkyNetGlobal signs up hardware and services.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Wireless network provider SkyNetGlobal has announced a three-way agreement with Unisys and Nortel Networks. SkyNetGlobal, launched in Australia in November 1999, is building a global wireless broadband network to provide high-speed remote...

Andersen and Microsoft unite to consult.(Andersen Consulting)(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2000... Microsoft has made its most significant leap into the consulting services business by forming a $US1 billion joint venture with Andersen Consulting, designed to help enterprise customers build e-commerce systems on Windows 2000. In...

Click wars: how to count Net users?(Zenith Media; Media Metrix)(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
May 1, 2000... Two major Internet ratings companies have cried foul to a market research study suggesting Internet visitation measurements such as "clicks" and "hits" are meaningless. Media buying company Zenith Media's research director, Deb Perry, who...

King rides the e-bullet.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Simon & Schuster has debuted popular horror writer Stephen king's latest work as an e-book, calling it "an experiment". Simon & Schuster has no expectations about the success of its latest offering. King -- who describes Riding the Bullet as a...

Microsoft buys a piece of RealNames.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Despite the 1998 debut of technology that lets anyone use keywords to search the Web, most people still have to type in "www" addresses. RealNames, the company that offers Internet keywords, is hoping that a 20 per cent investment from...

Sleeping giant.(Napster)
May 1, 2000... "Napster is sneaking in the back door and robbing me blind." [Scott Stapp, lead singer/lyricist for Creed] In recent months alt.net has examined many of the ways in which the Internet can be used to violate copyright. However, nothing...

online news.(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2000... Oxford online First published in 1928, the venerable Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has debuted online at www.oed.com, with all 750,000 defined terms accessible to paying subscribers, the Oxford University Press has announced. The...

Corel Custom Photo.(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2000... GRAPHICS SOFTWARE Corel Custom Photo, Corel's latest consumer graphics package, comprises two sub-programs: Photo House 5 for image manipulation/ preparation, and Project Designer to put the images into a card, calendar or Web publication...

MediaStudio Pro 6.0.(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2000... DIGITAL VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE Version 6.0 brings MediaStudio into the next century, with DV capture, DVD authoring capabilities and more than a passing nod to Web-based video delivery. MediaStudio is not just one program, but five...

Tektronix Phaser 850.(color laser printer)(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2000... COLOUR LASER PRINTER Tektronix's newest laser printer, the Phaser 850, really tears through colour documents: for graphics, it managed 2.4 pages per minute -- double the average for current colour lasers. It loses its lead when printing...

Canon BJC-3000.(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2000... COLOUR PRINTER Canon's many years of experience in the colour printer market shines through in its latest offering, the BJC-3000. With an asking price of only $299, the BJC-3000 removes your last excuse for not having professional quality...

Epson Expression 1600 Pro FireWire and Umax PowerLook 1100.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2000... SCANNERS The speedy port technology known as IEEE 1394 or FireWire is not exactly a household name: digital video camera vendors quickly adopted the standard, but mainstream PC peripherals (such as scanners) that incorporate it are only...

System Commander 2000.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... OS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE The latest version of V-Com's System Commander allows you to install and manage over 100 different operating systems. SC2000 will appeal to itinerant tinkerers, DOS garners, system testers and developers. ...

Palm IIIc.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... HANDHELD COMPUTER Palm personal digital assistants already cram a date book, an address book, a calculator, an expense report generator and an e-mail reader into a device not much bigger than a deck of cards. What else could these popular...

NetObjects Fusion 5.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... WEB AUTHORING TOOL When NetObjects Fusion was released, it created a new genre of Web authoring tools with its innovative site-oriented method of creation. For the first time, the developer was insulated from the underlying code and could...

Drumbeat 2000 e-commerce edition.(Software Review)
May 1, 2000... WEB AUTHORING TOOL When it comes to building dedicated Active Server Page-based Web sites, few authoring tools have the sophistication and flexibility of Drumbeat 2000. An e-commerce specific edition of Drumbeat 2000 has just been...

Electronics for Imaging EBeam and Virtual Ink Mimio.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... ELECTRONIC WHITEBOARD KITS How many times have you looked back on a meeting and wished you'd taken better notes? Electronic whiteboards can help by recording the scribbling of you and your colleagues, but they're expensive and too heavy to...

Sony SDM-N50.(Hardware Review)(Brief Article)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... LCD MONITOR All LCD monitors are slim, but the Sony SDM-N50 takes skinny to a new level: it's a scant 19mm thick -- half the depth of most competitors. However, this petite 15in LCD comes with a full-size $3299 price tag. Sony slimmed...

TView Gold Pro.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... PC TO TV VIDEO CONVERTER There's nothing like the impact that a big screen makes. Micronica has kept this in mind with the release of its TView Gold Pro. From recreating a cinema feel at home when watching DVDs to holding presentations at...

EditLive!(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... WEB EDITOR This program is a browser plug-in which enables users to edit sections of Web pages online in a WYSIWYG environment. Its appeal to industry is that administrators can configure the commercial version of the program to allow or...

Adaptec ReZOOM.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... DISASTER RECOVERY SOFTWARE In our January issue, Stan Miastkowski took a look at PC disaster recovery and the related software packages available on the market to help you out of your meltdown rut. Since then, another package has arrived...

Adobe PressReady.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... PRINTER UTILITY For graphic designers, colour reproduction must always be accurate, even for colour comps generated in the early stages of the design process. While ink jet printers have improved dramatically, they haven't been able to...

Sega Dreamcast.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... GAMES CONSOLE There's a hot, Internet-enabled gaming platform coming from Sony Computer Entertainment at the end of this year (see this month's News), but there is also a hot, Internet-enabled gaming platform available now. Sega's...

Gateway Select 1000.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... 1000MHz ATHLON PC AMD has pipped Intel to the post and retained the megahertz crown with the recent release of its 1000MHz (or 1GHz) processor. Unlike the souped-up Kryotech machine that PC World reviewed last month, this chip requires no...

Nomad II.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... MP3 PLAYER The Nomad II personal digital audio player is no ordinary MP3 player. It distinguishes itself by incorporating features such as an FM stereo tuner which is able to store up to 20 pre-sets, and a voice recorder capable of...

SoundBlaster Live! Platinum with Live Drive II.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... SOUND CARD Increasingly, higher-end technology is becoming an affordable option for consumers. This is especially evident in the home sound card market. The $499 SoundBlaster Live! Platinum edition with Live Drive II is Creative Lab's...

The true cost of communication.(Company Financial Information)
May 1, 2000... Stark evidence of the shifting nature of telecommunications emerged earlier this year with the release of Telstra's half-year financial results. The telecommunications giant announced six-month revenues of $9.6 billion and a record...

Competition will keep Linux whole.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2000... It is interesting that critics of Linux tend to exaggerate the potential for Linux to fragment as an argument against the open-source operating system. They usually point to the number of unique Linux distributions as evidence, because there...

Tampons and virtual sit-ins.(Industry Trend or Event)(Editorial)
May 1, 2000... Tick. Another second passes and those with Internet stocks are zillions of dollars richer, at least on paper, and the stock market bubbles away and the cyber economy powers on. It's all a bit surreal and in dire need of reality therapy. I have...

Shop till you e-drop.(Directory)
May 1, 2000... I received an e-mail recently from a reader who was exasperated by her attempts to do some online shopping. She claimed it would have been quicker to drive to the supermarket. Since I regularly use the Internet for some goods and services...

Readers forum.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2000... There has been a lot of news lately concerning e-commerce and its effects upon the business community within Australia. When it comes to e-commerce it is evident that Australia is falling behind many other countries, in particular the US....

Surfing FOR NIX.(free Internet service providers)(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2000... Connecting to the Net has never been cheaper than it is today, but there is one price you just can't beat, and that's "free". If you are considering connecting to the Net for the first time, or changing your current ISP (Internet Service...

READY, SET ... GST!(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... WITH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE GST JUST AROUND THE CORNER, THE TIME HAS COME TO GET YOUR BOOKS IN ORDER. WHETHER YOU ARE JUST STARTING OUT OR ALREADY HAVE AN ESTABLISHED ACCOUNTING SYSTEM, WE LOOK AT THE SOFTWARE YOU NEED TO TAKE THE STRESS OUT...

New stuff on the NET FOR NIX.(Directory)
May 1, 2000... GUIDE TO THE BEST FREE STUFF ONLINE FREE SITES AND SERVICES So much free stuff, so little time. It's no secret that a tremendous of freebies -- applications, services and sites -- are available on the Web, with more offerings cropping...

HOME, BUSINESS & SUB-$2000 PCS.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... HOME PCs 1 Peripherals Plus Athlon 700 Retaking the No. 1 position on the Home chart, the Peripherals Plus Athlon 700 -- with its blazing performance and fully featured configuration -- represents power, versatility and value for...

CORRECTION.(Correction Notice)
May 1, 2000... In the April 2000 issue on page 95 the wrong photograph was printed beside the Peripherals Plus Athlon 850. PCW apologises for the mistake.

NOTEBOOKS.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... POWER NOTEBOOKS 1 Gateway Solo 9300xl Deluxe This 650MHz Pentium III SpeedStep notebook offers a strong set of features as well as blistering performance. The system includes a massive 15.7in active TFT SXGA display, driven by an...

Linux World .com.au CD.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2000... Development of the base Linux operating system and supporting applications occurs at a frenetic pace. Keeping up with important releases of updated software can often be difficult. This month's CD contains several updates of recently released...

Linux Open Source Expo and Conference.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2000... DARLING HARBOUR EXHIBITION HALL 7 - 10 MARCH Over 30,000 people attended the combined IT 2000 & Linux Open Source Expo. The large number of exhibitors ranged from big corporations to local special interest groups; router manufacturers to...

Win4Lin: the latest Windows emulation tool for Linux.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... For better or worse, Microsoft Windows is the de facto standard in PC operating systems. Until Linux came along, the best a disgruntled user could do was move to OS/2. Now, however, Linux is all the rage, and the disgruntled masses (and curious...

XFS: SGI's extended file system goes open source.(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... One of the key features of SGI's operating system IRIX is its XFS file system. It was developed to meet the needs of massive graphical rendering systems, super computing arrays and large storage units. SGI is now porting the code to the Linux...

Backup and storage under Linux.(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... A key aspect of the functionality of any good business computer system is a reliable backup and storage system. Linux offers easy and flexible administration of such systems. Linux supports a wide range of SCSI and IDE tape backup units....

Edit digital video with your PC.(Technology Information)
May 1, 2000... If you'd like to turn your home videos into Fellini-like masterpieces (or try, anyway), the new generation of digital camcorders -- working in tandem with a PC equipped with a special add-in card and editing software -- can get you started. ...

Dual boot Windows 98 with Windows 2000 when Windows 98 is situated on the Primary partition.(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... Occasionally, a new operating system comes along that makes you think twice about whether you should upgrade your own machine's operating system. Windows 2000 is one such example. It has been touted as Microsoft's best OS ever, and has...

See more, get more.(Explorer 2000's Web view pane)(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... The Web view pane of the Windows 2000 Explorer vastly improves your preview of common bitmap image formats (such as GIF, JPEG and BMP), letting you zoom in and out or launch a larger preview window. To activate this feature for a given folder,...

Build your own custom icons.(Product Support)
May 1, 2000... The Mac is an inherently individual operating system. Pretty much any aspect of it is entirely under your command, and probably the easiest feature to customise is the icons that represent your files, folders and applications. Every file,...

WINDOWS 9X.(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... Instant folder trees In Windows 95 and the first version of Windows 98, files were managed using one of two views -- a two-pane Explorer window (with a folder tree on the left and file icons on the right) or a single folder window...

INTERNET.
May 1, 2000... Explore and survive the Usenet jungle Search engines get all the press, trying to outdo each other at tracking down absolutely every Web site dedicated to the study of early 20th century Hungarian cinema or the mating rituals of Amazonian...

WORLD PROCESSING.(Microsoft's Word 2000, Word 97)(Product Support)
May 1, 2000... Protect e-mailed documents from changes If you need to send a document as an e-mail attachment but want to make sure the recipients can't modify it, you have two options. One is to save the file as Read Only. To do this in Word 97, select...

SPREADSHEETS.(Questions and Answers)
May 1, 2000... Round values to the nearest fraction Q Is it possible to round a dollar amount to the nearest 25 cents? For example, if a number appears as $1.65, I would like to convert it to $1.75. The Round() function in Excel seems to work only with...

HARDWARE.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2000... A backup a day keeps the headaches away The most pernicious threat to your PC's data isn't a dead hard drive, a rogue virus or a stray bolt of lightning. It's human nature. The only sure-fire way to protect your files is to back them up....

bugs & fixes.(Product Information)
May 1, 2000... Windows 2000 critical update (17 February) The day before the worldwide launch of Windows 2000, Microsoft announced a critical update for Windows 2000. It is not too surprising that this patch was released so soon -- Windows 2000 had been...

The answer to usable Web sites is training.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2000... It's obvious that organisations -- from the very small, to the large corporates and government departments -- want to be part of the "e" action, and quickly, lest they miss out. Some organisations are up to their second and third generations of...

Working in the Web wonderland.(Company Operations)
May 1, 2000... People who work in Web development invariably come into the profession from a varied career path, and Stefan Gillard is no exception. Now head of Interactive Services at Spike, Stefan Gillard started doing freelance copywriting work. Gillard's...

courses on offer.(Directory)
May 1, 2000... This list is a sample of what is on offer from training institutions addressing Web development training. Lotus Phone: 1800 627 608 * Developing Interactive Web Applications for Notes Developers * Domino Web Development *...

newmedia.com.au.(Review)
May 1, 2000... This is not a how-to book but an analysis of how our society and economy are being affected by the new technologies of communication. As such, it is a serious treatment that draws on worldwide resources but remains ever relevant to Australia....

The Internet Marketing Plan (Second Edition).(Review)
May 1, 2000... Marketers and advertisers, the world over, are being confronted with a new medium and new communities, and they need to develop new techniques if they are to keep doing business in the Internet age. Kim Bayne distils a great deal of online...

Build Your Own Pentium III PC.(Review)
May 1, 2000... Build Your Own Pentium III PC is a big fat book that is intended to put into a single reference source all the information anyone would need about what to buy, and how to stick it all together to make a computer. At $49.95 such a book could...

Acronym Interaction, Expansion and Extrapolation Engine.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
May 1, 2000... www.brunching.com/toys/toyacronymer.html Confused by technical acronyms Fear not, the ultimate explanatory resource is now at hand! AIEEE generates plausible-sounding technical meanings for any acronym, real or made-up, that you care to...

Internet Trash.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... internettrash.com Many people like to use free Web hosting sites like GeoCities and Xoom to host their pages, but many more people get annoyed by the useless pop-up banners and unwanted advertising that come along with these services. So...

TheFreeSite.com.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
May 1, 2000... www.thefreesite.com Since we're on the topic of free stuff, TheFreeSite.com is worth mentioning. Dedicated to helping people find freebies on the Web, the site covers more than just software, extending to sample products and free services...

CoolText.com.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
May 1, 2000... www.cooltext.com Free graphic design! Well, not quite -- what's on offer here is a site that will generate a professional-looking title logo for your Web page from a number of preset styles. You choose the words, size, style and colour,...

NoWebPatents.org.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
May 1, 2000... www.nowebpatents.org The technology of the Internet began its development in the 1960s, and its popularity expanded as the protocols and designs for a worldwide network infrastructure were made freely available to all who desired to...

gadgets.(Product Announcement)
May 1, 2000... 3M Professional Wrist Rest The mouse pad, though humble, is critical to graphic computing -- imagine trying to use Windows if you couldn't tell the pointer where to go. A couple of years ago, 3M created the first pad designed to grip the...

Nox.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... Do you have bats in your hair? Is a 3 metre Golem trying to bash your head in? If so, you're probably in the land of Nox. The top-down action/RPG from Westwood is a smashing good time, filled with addictive gameplay and a well-written story...

Tips.(Product Support)
May 1, 2000... * GENERAL TIPS: Talk to everyone! Nox may appear to be an action-based game, but there are several spells, items and heaps of gold to be found if you talk to the right people. Don't buy every little weapon or piece of armour just because...

Half-Life: Opposing Force.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
May 1, 2000... Last year, the computer game industry was knocked flat by Valve Software's Half-Life. That 3D action/ adventure was voted game of the year by so many different magazines and Web sites that Sierra confidently released a "Game of the Year"...

bytesback.(Humor)(Column)
May 1, 2000... Do not pass go Here's a lesson. If the bank makes an error -- especially a big error -- in your favour, don't try to live high off the proceeds. If you do spend the money and you get caught, don't complain about getting caught. A...